Double Grilling To Avoid Miranda Wrong: Justices

By |June 28, 2004

The Supreme Court today warned police to stop using a strategy intended to extract confessions from criminal suspects before telling them of their right to remain silent, reports the Associated Press. By a 5-4 vote, the court said deliberately questioning a suspect twice — the first time without reading the required Miranda warning — is usually improper. The decision upheld a Missouri Supreme Court ruling in an appeal by murder suspect Patrice Seibert.

“Strategists dedicated to draining the substance out of Miranda cannot accomplish by training instrucitons what [the Court] held Congress could not do by statute,” said Justice David Souter for the majority.

The legislation marks a major change for Republicans, who long hve embraced a law-and-order rallying cry. Now many GOP senators argue for rehabilitating more offenders rather than long-time incarceration.

An Arizona doctor argues that the government should have learned from previous federal anti-drug strategies that blanket prohibition doesn’t work. He calls for scrapping attempts to curtail opioids and replacing it with “harm reduction” policies.

Expensive medications for inmates can lead to substandard care and delays in treatment, and that may have lasting—even deadly—consequences for incarcerated individuals, writes a prison health care advocate.

Murder rates in the nation’s 30 largest cities are projected to fall by nearly 6 percent this year according to the latest data, undercutting claims that the nation is experiencing a “crime wave,” says the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

School safety commission proposes ending a federal guideline telling schools not to punish minorities at higher rates. The panel largely sidestepped issues relating to guns, although it favors arming some school personnel.